Cybersecurity entangled in turf wars

The White House is scrambling to influence cybersecurity legislation that’s been tangled in a web of policy, politics and parochialism — even reaching out to Republican leaders as the House prepares to act on the issue later this month.

On the surface, the players are battling over the best way to protect the nation’s electric grid, water facilities and other critical infrastructure from being taken down by a crippling cyberattack.

In one corner, the champions of the civilian Homeland Security Department: the White House and the Homeland Security panels in the House and Senate. In another corner, proxies for the National Security Agency: House Republicans and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, who represents the NSA’s Maryland headquarters.

A third group, led by John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the Senate and Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) in the House, has also weighed in with a bill that focuses on fostering information sharing about cyberthreats between the government and critical infrastructure operators without tacking new security mandates onto businesses.

It all makes for a twisted tale of how a basic national security imperative — cooperation between the government and private companies — could fall victim to the vagaries and vanities of Congress.

“Initially, we saw each chamber really take a cross-committee approach and now, we’re seeing the emergence of jurisdiction and parochial interests that are trumping that,” an administration official said in an interview with POLITICO.

Still, with the Senate snarled over competing versions of the bill, House leaders and administration officials are talking.

House Republican aides have met with officials from the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to discuss the White House’s cybersecurity plan, and Republican leaders are confident they’ll have Democratic votes for a package of bills that they plan to bring to the floor — though they are certain to get some backing from Democrats with or without the White House’s blessing.

“We think it’s possible that the package of bills we plan to bring to the floor at the end of April — which deal with information-sharing and liability changes, among other matters — will be able to garner bipartisan support,” a House GOP leadership aide said.

The administration, which plans to lobby House Democrats in the next two weeks, is hoping that Democrats can gain leverage to demand changes by withholding their votes.

“We’re going to say to Dems, ‘Have you read all the ACLU and Center for Democracy & Technology’s concerns with the bill?’” the administration official said, referring to a measure by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Ruppersberger. “House Dems should be demanding answers.”

But House GOP leaders could suffer 25 defections before they would need a single Democratic vote — and only one of the eight Democrats on the Intelligence panel, Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, voted against the Rogers-Ruppersberger bill at the committee level.